Riston Taylor scored his 24 points near the basket against defense, alone in front of the defense off turnovers and three times from 3-point range. (Press Pros Feature Photos by Logan Howard)
The Eagles struggled to 14 victories a year ago with a young team. But this year’s team, led by senior Riston Taylor, is unbeaten through six games, playing chaotic defense and leading the league in 3-point shooting.
Troy, OH – The mean-old-green Grinch stole Christmas, grew a heart and gave the gifts back.
A nice, feel-good story for the ages.
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The Troy Christian boys basketball team, in their home whites trimmed in green, got a little Grinchy Tuesday night. The Eagles stole the basketball again and again and again from Riverside, but they didn’t give anything back.
Veteran columnist Jeff Gilbert writes Ohio State football and basketball and OHSAA sports for Press Pros Magazine.com.
They are the 2025 December feel-good story.
Ray Zawadzki Jr.’s team, young and inexperienced a year ago, spent the offseason growing a heart, a heart to play hard, to be relentless on defense, to be unselfish on offense, to put teams away. Sometimes from the start, sometimes after a slow start.
Tuesday was a slow-start night for the 6-0 Eagles. Riverside (3-3) led by two points after the first quarter. Then, with the same furious energy of the Grinch descending on Whoville, the Eagles descended on the Pirates with a 23-point second quarter, a 34-point third quarter and, before the fourth quarter began, a running clock for a 70-36 Three Rivers Conference victory.
“They’re starting to figure out that they can be pretty good,” said Zawadzki Jr., whose same group of players was an uncharacteristically average 14-11 last season. “Last year was a struggle. It was a struggle to score, it was a struggle to stop people, it was a struggle just to win games. What they’re figuring out is that we can be successful collectively, and when we do the little things that all adds up.”
Gabriel Wilkins is hammered by Riverside’s Camden Shoe, which was about the only way the Pirates could stop the Eagles.
Under Zawadzki Jr. the Eagles win. In his 400th game as their head coach Tuesday, his record grew to 290-110. His teams typically push the pace, agitate with defense and score a lot of points. Last year they averaged 48.6 points. The average is up to 66.5 this year.
They are doing it three ways.
A pressing, double-teaming defense creates turnovers, many of them of the live-ball variety, to create easy points. They ignite the fast break after rebounds and off made baskets as much as possible. When forced into half-court offense, they face a lot of zone defense, a strategy Riverside used the entire game. No matter. The Eagles lead the league in 3-point shooting at 38%.
“We can’t slow down our pace, and we can’t let people speed us up,” said 6-foot-4 senior Riston Taylor, who matched his league-leading average with 24 points. “So we do a really good job of that, keeping our control and speeding other people up.”
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And it all starts on defense.
“Our main goal this year is just trying to create chaos so we can get more on the offensive side,” Taylor said.
The Eagles were looking for opportunities in the first quarter to run and jump into double teams, but the Pirates were ready for it, not turning their back and getting open shots. So in the second quarter the Eagles stopped sneaking around looking for who they might steal the ball from. They attacked head-on with double teams every chance they got.
The turnovers multiplied. In an early second-quarter stretch, Brennan Hochwalt made a steal in the backcourt and scored. Another quick turnover led to a free throw. A double-team at halfcourt created a traveling violation, leading to a Taylor jumper from the elbow. Then Taylor turned another steal into a layup.
Seven points in 48 seconds and the Eagles’ lead was 21-15. That was only the beginning. They finished the half with a 23-12 advantage in the quarter and led 34-25.
“We’ve been trying to wear people out, trying to pick the tempo up a little bit, trying to force them into a game that we want to play,” Zawadzki Jr. said. “Sometimes they’re going to have streaks where they are successful against us. But if we continually keep pushing that envelope of where we want to try to wear them down, it should present easy opportunities for us.”
Troy Christian’s Brennan Hochwalt glides in for two of his 11 points.
Welcome to the third quarter of easy opportunities.
The Eagles scored 10 points in the first 57 seconds, half of them directly off steals.
“It just feels great, that high intensity,” Taylor said. “We just pushed it up to keep going in that quarter. As we get on those runs, just being a team, it feels amazing.”
The Eagles’ 34 points represented their highest scoring quarter of the season, surpassing the 32 they scored in the first quarter Friday against Milton-Union. When Austin Stangel canned one of the Eagles’ nine 3-pointers in transition with 2:06 left in the third, the score reached 64-29 and the clock kept running.
“The goal is to move the ball unselfishly, play hard defensively and knock down shots,” Zawadzki Jr. said. “What you saw in the third quarter is what we’re capable of. These kids can shoot the basketball, but I tell them they’ve got to earn the right to shoot it. So they’ve got to defend, and they’ve got to rebound.”
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Taylor has been the big scorer. But he gets plenty of help and got some Tuesday. Stangel scored 14, Hochwalt 11 and five others scored.
The Eagles are 4-0 in league play with blowout wins over Bethel, Covington, Milton-Union and Riverside. Their next three league games are against rival Miami East, Northridge and Lehman Catholic. The latter two are 3-0 in the league.
“Our next three are going to be a nice challenge for us,” Zawadzki Jr. said. “We got the four that we needed to get.”
Then it’s the second time through the league with non-league games mixed in against Russia and others. December has been good to the Eagles, putting them at the top of the Division VI RPI rankings in the northern half of the Southwest District.
Tournament time is a long way off, but to keep and earn that first seed, the Eagles will focus on being the feel-good story in the new year.
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